1841.1 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



269 



against us because we resorted to " experiments :" it is, therefore, difficult to 

 conceive how we should have proceeded to form our Report, unless by an 

 imphcit reliance upon his assertions, which certainly do not, in some cases, 

 rest upon either appearances or experiments. 



The great gist of the charges against us is, that we employed in our ex- 

 periments an apparatus improperly constructed ; for he says, " the patentee 

 utterly disclaims the apparatus experimented upon by Messrs. Davies and 

 Ryder as his, any further than that the pipes were closed in all parts." — This 

 charge assumes a very imposing aspect ; and if we had done designedly that 

 which he here imputes to us, we should indeed have been highly culpable. 

 From a few facts the reader may judge of the truth of the allegation. Mr. 

 Perkins sold some time ago to Mr. Walker the patent right to the apparatus 

 for Manchester and the vicinity. When we were professionally engaged by 

 the Directors of the Assurance Company, we first inspected the premises 

 which had been recently injured ; and then, previously to the performance of 

 any experiments, applied to Mr. Walker to see what information or assistance 

 he was able and willing to afford. Mr. Walker acceded, in the most obliging 

 manner, to our application ; accompanied us to some establishments where 

 the apparatus was in operation ; and promised to get erected on his own 

 premises, and under his own superintendence, a suitable apparatus, on Mr. 

 Perkins's system, for the express purpose of our experiments. Some little 

 delay occurred ; and, as it happened, Mr. Walker had in the interval several 

 interviews on the subject with Mr. Perkins, to whom our investigation was 

 no secret ! The apparatus was at length put up ; the form and the propor- 

 tion of the parts were precisely those which Mr. Perkins bad taught Mr. 

 Walker, and on the same principle which had guided Mr. \\'alker in others 

 which he had erected, and might be called upon to erect ; and was, therefore, 

 in every respect as essentially on " Perkins's System " as any of those which 

 have been yet introduced into any building in Manchester. In short, Mr. 

 Walker made the apparatus ; we the experiments. In all the operations we 

 had the assistance of Mr. Walker's intelligent Foreman, and that of other 

 persons belonging to his establishment. 



Mr. Perkins does not find fault with 26 feet of coil in the furnace, though 

 he forgets that only 21 feet, as stated, were exposed to the fire, a fact which, 

 being in his favour, he conveniently suppresses ; but he seizes with avidity 

 upon a presumed deficiency in the expansion pipe, insisting that from the 

 proportions in the diagram annexed to the Report, it must have been " six 

 inches less than the apparatus required." Now, even in this plausible objec- 

 tion a slight inadvertency on our parts has rendered him unfortunate ; for the 

 diagram having been originally drawn from dimensions given by one of Mr. 

 Walker's assistants was, as it happened, six inches less than it was found, on 

 actual admeasurement, to be in the apparatus really employed in the experi- 

 inents performed. 



It is asserted in the " Answer" that "in the absence of Mr. Walker a stop- 

 cock was introduced, which, cutting off the greater part of the circulation, 

 left only 40 feet of the tubing out of the furnace to carry off all the heat that 

 could be communicated from 26 feet within it." This is a grave charge ; but 

 like the others, it rests entirely upon Mr. Perkins's vivid imagination. A 

 reference, liowever, to our diagram, which, by singular ill luL-k is, whetlier 

 correct or incorrect, a stumbling-block to Mr. Perkins, will clearly show that 

 instead of 40 feet of tubing there were 140, with 21 feet only exposed to the 

 action of the fire '. As to the stopcock, it is suflicient to remark that it was 

 contrived and attached by Mr. Walker himself! 



Mr. Perkins, in his allusions to his safety valve, places himself in an awk- 

 ward dilemma. Such an addition is either necessary or it is not : if unne- 

 cessary, then it renders the apparatus no better than it was previously ; but 

 if it is really necessary, what are we to think of the person who has been 

 until " recently " endangering, by his own acknowledgment, in bis " some 

 hundreds of apparatus," life and property to an unlimited extent ? What are 

 we to think of him who could, knowingly, leave such places as Messrs. Crafts 

 and Stell's unsupplied with an essential protection ? Did he carefidly and 

 promptly impress Mr. Walker with its great importance .' 



We have reason to believe that this gentleman was not acquainted with it 

 previously to the publication of our Report. It appears, then, that Mr. Per- 

 kins sold for Manchester and the vicinity an apparatus which he has, for 

 some time, known to be dangerous, and against which danger he did not warn 

 either Mr. Walker or bis customers until he produced his " Answer" to our 

 statements. The pubUc have, therefore, derived some information from oiu' 

 Report, whatever may be the advantage which the " Answer" has conferred 

 upon its author. 



Mr. Perkins rallies us very much for having said that the experiments made 

 at the Natural History Museum, and at Messrs. Vernon and Co.'s, were " un- 

 satisfactory." Whatever may be his opinion, we regard it as unwarrantable 

 to make experiments, even with his apparatus, where other people's property 

 might be endangered. That was, we can assure him, the reason which in- 

 duced us to afford him this opportunity for the display of his pleasantry. 



When he taunts us, so humourously, in reference to the explosion, by say- 

 ing, to our discomfiture, that " some grey calicoes spread round the furnace 

 were alone wanting to complete the scene, and put the finishing touch to this 

 exquisite specimen of ' Perkins's Hot Water Apparatus,' " he forgets that this 

 experiment was so amply illustrated in the warehouse of Messrs. Crafts and 

 Stell, that it could not, by possibility, be rendered more striking by repeti- 

 tion. This is a portion of his " Answer," in which he is peculiarly jocular ; 

 as if the destruction of " grey calicoes" by fire, and the consequent loss of a 

 great amount of valuable property, were a most amusing exhibition. It can 



only be compared to the case in which Nero fiddled while Rome was burning. 

 This sort of wit may induce an enemy to smile, but it must, certainly, make 

 a real friend look very serious. 



An attempted explanation of an unexpected phenomenon is pronounced to 

 be a "manifest absurdity," because, as Mr. Perkins positively avers, "it is 

 impossible that increase of heat can be produced by the condensation or cool- 

 ing of steam ! ! " He must surely have intended this statement as a piece of 

 irony to relieve a dull discussion ; for, if be bad really any doubts upon the 

 subject, he might have easily and readily proved that the very reverse of his 

 assertion is the fact; and if that failed to satisfy him, he might have demon- 

 strative evidence whenever he may pay his contemplated \isit to Manchester. 



Mr. Perkins might on this point have consulted authority. An author 

 who treats of bis system, and with whose work he may be supposed to be 

 acquainted, says, that " the specific beat of condensed steam, compared with 

 [that of] water, is. for equal weights, as '847 to 1 : but the latent heat of 

 steam being estimated at 1000°, we shall find the relative heat attainable 

 from equal weights of condensed steam, and of water, reducing both from the 

 temperature of 212° to eo"", to be as 7-425 to 1." 



Mr. Perkins afterwards says, that " another observation from which erron- 

 eous conclusions are drawn," (of course from an error in the premises,) " is 

 that the temperature of the pipes, is influenced by the variation of their in- 

 ternal diameter : this is not the case ; the amount of heat conducted off de- 

 pends on the surface exposed to the atmosphere, and not upon the internal 

 diameter :" from which all that can be inferred is, that Mr. Perkins's pipes 

 must be of a very peculiar kind, when, all other things being the same, the 

 internal diameter affords no indication of their magnitude. 



Mr. Perkins tries to evade another explanation by the assurance that " the 

 expansive power of hydrogen gas is far less than that of water." Let us 

 examine this singular statement. Professor Graham, of the London Univer- 

 sity, says, " Hydrogen gas, steam, and the vapour of sulphuric ether, expand 

 in the same proportion as air." — "The expansion by heat of the different 

 forms of matter is exceedingly various. By being heated from 32° to 212", 

 1000 cubic inches of iron become 1004 



1000 water 1045 



1000 air 1375 



Gases are, therefore," he adds, " more expansible by heat than matter in the 

 other two conditions of liquid and solid." Thus Mr. Perkins rests his ob- 

 jection on the assumption that 1 000 increased by 375 is "far less " than 1 000 

 increased by 45 ! The reader can now judge for himself how much, in even 

 this simple case, Mr. P. knows of the properties of the agents which his ap- 

 paratus requires, and of those which it is liable to bring into action. 



Mr. Hood, in treating of the hot water apparatus, says that " a most ma- 

 terial difference of temperature occurs in the several parts of the apparatus;" 

 a fact, which we have attempted to explain, but the very existence of which 

 Mr. Perkins denies. It is thus accounted for in the work before us : — " The 

 difference, amounting sometimes to as much as 200' or 300°, arises from the 

 great resistance which the water meets with, in consequence of the extremely 

 small size of the pipes, and also from the great number of bends, or angles, 

 that of necessity occur, in order to accumulate a sufficient quantity of pipe." 



" M'e shall find," says the author, " that a temperature of 450° produces a 

 pressure of 420 ft. per square inch, while a temperature of 530° makes the 

 pressure 900 tb. ; and when it reaches 560°, the pressure is then 1150 ft. per 

 square inch. Those who are acquainted with the working of steam engines 

 are aware that a pressure of 45 to 48 ft. per square inch is considered as the 

 maximum for high pressure boilers ; but we see that in this apparatus the 

 pressure varies from ten times to twenty-four times that amount. It will also 

 be borne in mind that, in consequence of the extremely small quantity of 

 water used in these pipes, the slightest increase in the heat of the furnace 

 will cause an immediate increase in the pressure on the whole apparatus. 

 For it appears that if the temperature of the pipes be increased 50' above the 

 amount before stated, the pressure will be raised to 1800 ft. per square inch; 

 and by increasing the temperature 40° more, the pressure will be immediately 

 raised to 2500 tb. per square inch ; so that any accidental circumstance tvhich, 

 causes the furnace to burn more briskly than usual, may, at any moment, in- 

 crease the pressure to an immense amount." 



Mr. Perkins seems, in some allusions, to insinuate an impression on his 

 part, that we entertain towards him something like a feeling of hostihty. 

 Any impression of the kind is, we can assure him, completely unfounded. He 

 is entirely unknown to us, excepting in connexion with his system. We were 

 required to investigate his apparatus as ire found it ; and, without any per- 

 sonal consideration, we conducted that investigation to the best of our know- 

 ledge and abiUty. 



In conclusion, we beg to assure Mr. Perkins, that if he can really render 

 his " system" safe, we shall, on being satisfied as to the fact, be quite as ready- 

 to recommend it, as we have been to warn the public of the danger which 

 might arise from its use in the state in which it was when we were called 

 upon to examine it. 



Report of William Fairbaim, Esq. 



Having directed my attention to the experiments recently conducted by 

 Mr. Davies and Mr. Kyder on this apparatus, 1 have been induced further to 

 extend my inquiries, and to visit several establishments where Mr. Perkins's 

 system of heating has been introduced. Amongst others I may mention 

 those of Messrs. Schunck, Mylius & Co., Messrs. Novell! & Albanelli, as 



